OPINION:
Inflection points in national dialogue and history are easy to miss. This week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., is one — it represents a key gathering, of key leaders, in a key year, on key issues. From 2018 election strategy and tax cuts to national security and gun rights, what gets said here matters to America’s future.
Forty-five years ago, in 1973, the first CPAC conference was held by the American Conservative Union and Young Americans for Freedom, two groups with high ambitions and low membership. Ronald Reagan gave CPAC’s keynote the next year, but America was in a fog, recovering from the 1960s.
Political diffusion, confusion and disorientation abounded. The New Left was coming on line, pressing abortion (versus prenatal life), “socially constructed gender roles” (versus biology), redistribution of wealth (versus keep what you earn), and increased federal government intervention in everything (versus individual liberty).
Russell Kirk, author of “The Conservative Mind,” was a leading thinker, but William F. Buckley probably took the cake. Author of “God and Man at Yale,” he became a standard bearer for the American Conservative Union, and beacon for CPAC.
Mr. Buckley was not just a wordsmith, able to convey more common sense in a phrase than most could in a page, but a gladiator with words. He battled for the truth in conservative thought.
Mr. Buckley reminded America that “the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world, and the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another plane.”
With laconic wit, he took down intolerance and political correctness succinctly: “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
He pounced on hypocrisy: “If only the left hated crime as much as they hated hate,” he opined. And with a sigh, he noted that “a conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling ’stop,’ at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
We are here again. Today, the nation is at another Rubicon. The 2018 elections will decide whether the first conservative president since Ronald Reagan will have a Congress focused on common sense, or one “shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
The year ahead is pivotal. Conservatives must trumpet the largest tax cut in four decades, restore appreciation for history, explain the importance of national security and defend individual liberty as strongly as Mr. Buckley did.
Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Venezuela represent the counterweight, where “individualism” has been sacrificed on the secular alter of “collectivism,” with catastrophic results.
But America’s democracy is fragile. We are vulnerable to being misled. Conservatives need to explain the importance of facts, history and truth. Beyond Russian (and Chinese in 1996) election meddling, homegrown disruption is on the rise.
Phrases like “resistance” echo a dark past, disparaging our Constitution and electoral process. Obvious antecedents are the “French Resistance” of World War II and “Polish Resistance” of the 1980s. One battled Nazis, the other Communists.
This is not a coincidence, any more than seeing ABC calling “Christianity” a “mental illness,” or watching China co-opt Catholics into letting an abusive Communist government appoint “Catholic bishops.” Truth is under siege.
So this year’s CPAC event should not be a celebration, as much as battle planning. Instead of breath-catching contentment, we need redoubled commitment — to the truth.
Yes, the Trump administration is trying to realign, shrink and lead a bloated federal government, avert social chaos, restore social order, tamp down social division, and re-establish social cohesion. That is not enough.
This year’s CPAC is an inflection point, testing whether “this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure,” whether we know what made us great, or indulge what threatens to tear us apart.
The options are political connectivity or political cannibalism. The choice is consequential. 2018 will either empower Americans, or dash their expectations, call out our higher angels or leave us at the mercy of our worst instincts.
Americans who care about the future must now “stand athwart history, yelling ’stop,’ at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” We must respect the past, to protect the future.
This was Mr. Buckley’s and Mr. Reagan’s central admonition: Be on guard against the creep of untruth, in well-meaning disguises. Truth the sort we “hold to be self-evident” does not find you. You have to find it.
Said Mr. Buckley, in those early CPAC days: “Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out.”
Politically incorrect, Mr. Buckley was a reliable compass. Americans need to reread that compass, understand the storm, lead each another out of the fog. 2018 CPAC is where that begins.
• Robert Charles is a former assistant secretary of State under George W. Bush and a lawyer. He writes often on law and national security.
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